This is the fourth
volume of five surveying the complete
organ works of Felix Mendelssohn, played
by Jennifer Bate. Bate had apparently
recorded a portion of the works already
when her attention was drawn to the
new edition by Christian Martin Schmidt.
This new edition contains many corrections
and newly discovered works. Bate decided
to start again.

I find it incomprehensible
why Jennifer Bate's scholarly intentions
regarding the text from which she plays
completely fail to be matched by any
form of aesthetic awareness of early
romantic performance practice at the
organ. The organs she chooses are way,
way off the mark; not a single instrument
with mechanical action and all from
a very different time and ethos from
the instruments Mendelssohn came across
in this life. The organs here are, with
one exception, late Victorian and Edwardian
English instruments. The exception is
the 1960s Walker at Wimborne Minster
which sounds foul. Of the late romantic
instruments, Percy Whitlock's Hill at
Bournemouth sounds marvellous, as does
the Lewis at Upper Norwood, the two
big Harrisons at The Temple and All
Saints Margaret Street are also very
fine indeed. But the fact remains that
Mendelssohn, even when in England, never
dreamed of such instruments, far less
played them. Bate tailors her playing
to the organs rather than to Mendelssohn's
music; she adds many dynamic changes,
clarinets float in and out of the Swell
box, the high pressure reeds and occasional
celestes conjure up another age. Mendelssohn's
music is conceived for the classical
organs he knew; the few dynamic changes
refer exclusively to change of manual
or, occasionally, addition of stops,
(as in the third Sonata). Articulation
markings are dominated by the 'accent-slur',
in fact a remnant of the beat-hierarchy
of 17th and 18th century. By choosing
these orchestrally conceived instruments
and playing them accordingly Bate has,
seemingly unwittingly, re-constructed
the English performance practice of
the 19-teens onwards and Mendelssohn's
music is obscured accordingly.

It’s a shame also that
the alternative versions of the movements
of the 2nd sonata aren't played in the
order they appear in that Sonata.

A new Mendelssohn recording
is clearly required in light of recent
research. Some alternative versions
of the best known pieces are especially
interesting. Please wait however for
one played by an organist with a good
sense of the aesthetics of the music,
and recorded on one of the many fine
organs dating from Mendelssohn's lifetime
to be found throughout Germany, the
Netherlands, Switzerland and elsewhere.
Bate, with her leaden performances on
bloated instruments, misses the point
badly on both counts.

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